|
|
Alan Cheuse reads
Flutter: A Federal Gothic
in RealAudio format.
|
 |
You can change
your life. You can. You must. Mark Jenkins insisted on this with himself
on the Metro early that morning. He'd been awake since
five-thirty, catching the first light while he worked out, watching the
local news and then CNN while chewing his cereal with yogurt. Scanning
the advertisement for the George Washington Hospital Center on the wall
of the rolling subway car, he noticed that he felt good—felt good about
himself, as they say, because of the way the project was going.
And that wasn't
all.
Glancing around
the car, Jenkins didn't have to look far to see old versions of himself.
That young clerk with his ID dangling from a chain about his neck, his
headphones covering his ears, his head slumped against the window as the
train slid beneath the river: look at his belly, lolling over his
belt-line. Or the way that older man leaned back against the door. You
could tell a married man a mile away—that haunted look about his eyes,
the developing paunch, the way he pressed his back against the door as
though cowering from a mugger.
Fortunately,
Jenkins had never gotten that far. Past the altar and out of the church
with Marian, to be sure, but never very far into the realm of flab. He
had put on his fifteen pounds, but when he and Marian split up—till
work do us part—the extra weight fell away.
The train slid to
a stop and the doors parted. Several high-school boys, faces ranging in
color from mahogany to deep night, pushed their way into the crowded
car. Just before the signal chimed and the doors shushed closed, Jenkins
caught a faint chanking sound, the filtered noise of three sets of
headphones grinding out rap and rap and more rap into the ears of the
school boys.
He dared himself
to catch their eyes. But the boys were lost in the music. Two more stops
and he was lost himself, up and out of the car, and through the early morning
rush-hour flow, up the moving stairs into the light wind of the street.
In fact, he skipped up the last few stairs. Didn't know exactly why he
was feeling this sudden surge of energy. (Well, he had an idea, but not
a certainty, not in the least. ) Into the downtown sun of spring.
Capital of the world. He inhaled the odd mixture of flowers and diesel
fumes.
Capital perfume.
|
|
|
